


Our Gift to God

by Shiny_n_new



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Gods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-03-04
Updated: 2012-03-04
Packaged: 2017-11-01 03:52:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/351670
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shiny_n_new/pseuds/Shiny_n_new
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Holmes siblings are gods, ruling over England. John goes to Sherlock, the dangerous and unpredictable one, to beg for help.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Our Gift to God

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this ](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com/9100.html?thread=44602508#t44602508)prompt at the [Sherlock Kink Meme.](http://sherlockbbc-fic.livejournal.com)

John had been to Mycroft’s temple plenty of times. Nearly everyone in London had, and most English citizens had visited at least once. Tall and lofty, it was the kind of temple a person would expect out of London’s patron and one of the most powerful gods in the British Isles. There were marble floors and columns, furniture and doors made from rich oak wood that was polished daily, and the whole thing had an air of stateliness. It was constantly full of people, the low, hushed tones of conversation always present in the air. John had come regularly as a child along with his parents, done the usual offerings in hopes of luck and prosperity later in life (especially during exams in medical school), and his unit had all made an offering before they shipped out to Afghanistan.

John had never been to Sherlock’s temple. No one went to Sherlock’s temple. No one knew where it _was_. The rumors about the younger god were enough to keep most away. Jealous, covetous, sometimes violent, always unpredictable. His moods changed like quicksilver, people said. ‘He can look at you and know every secret you’ve ever tried to keep.’ He was powerful and dangerous and unlike his brother Mycroft, Sherlock had made no rules for safely asking his favor. People didn’t go to Sherlock unless they were desperate.

John was beyond desperate.

His old mate from medical school, Mike Stamford, had been the one to provide the route to Sherlock’s temple.

“John, this is insane,” Mike had said. “I know you’re upset about Harry-”

“You’re not going to talk me out of this,” John had interrupted. “Give me the map.”

But Mike had persisted in trying to dissuade John, sounding increasingly worried as it didn’t work. “We send him _body parts_ , Johnny. That’s how the hospital earns his favor. Body parts. I don’t know what he does with them, and I don’t want to know, but that’s what he requests. The poor interns are the ones who deliver them, and I’ve had sixteen in just the past year come to me begging not to have to go back. Eighty-two have been tossed around or got something thrown at them, and that’s just since I’ve been working here. He’s dangerous and he’s unpredictable. I think he comes in here sometimes. We find things missing and moved around.”

John had held firm, and Mike had finally handed over a map to Sherlock’s temple. John had sighed upon seeing that it was underground, and he’d started making preparations.

That had been yesterday. Now, today, he was armed with a torch, his gun, his Army pack, and the map. He’d paid up the rent on his meager little flat until the end of the month, since he wasn’t sure when he was going to be back, and he’d made a final visit to Harry’s hospital room. There’d been no change, of course.

Sherlock’s temple was beneath London, massive and spread out through hundreds of rooms and passages, like some sinister tube station. “It’s got to be huge,” Mike had said. “We’ve only seen a few rooms, but if you look at the city plans for the sewer pipes and the Underground routes, there’s a giant blank space right in the middle of the city where nothing is allowed to be built. It’s all his.”

It was surprisingly easy to get into Sherlock’s underground kingdom, though. In the basement of Mike’s lab, there was a heavy metal grate over a large tunnel going straight down, with a ladder bolted to the stone walls of the tunnel. Most people would have just assumed it was a maintenance access to the subway system. It was far from the only entrance (Mike reckoned there were ways in and out scattered through the entire city), but it suited John’s purposes well. Mike held the grate open for John as the doctor strapped his cane to the back of his Army pack and started climbing down the ladder.

“Be careful, please,” Mike said, watching John climb with worried eyes.

“Go back upstairs and get back to things, Mike,” John said, not unkindly. “Either you’ll see me again or you won’t.”

Mike nodded, jaw clenched and let the gate close over John. The metallic sound echoed loudly, the sound bouncing off the walls of the tunnel like a stone being dropped. John went back to climbing. He had a feeling Mike didn’t leave until John was well out of sight, swallowed up by the darkness.

It was pitch black, making the descent a nerve-wracking one. He had to feel out each rung on the ladder, slowly and hesitantly. After about two minutes, John’s leg was crying out for mercy and shoulder was aching like he’d been stabbed. He was honestly starting to worry that the pain would make him lose dexterity and slip up when his feet hit the ground quite abruptly.

John took a moment to steady himself, leaning against the ladder for support. He pulled the torch out of his pack and clicked it on, wincing at the sudden light. The tunnel he was in was a fairly spacious one, with enough room for three people to walk side-by-side comfortably. John gave a little sigh of relief at that. Hopefully the rest of the tunnels would be this large. He wasn’t claustrophobic, but there was still something unnerving about the thought of being trapped in a small space, underground, with no way of getting out.

His cane echoed ridiculously loudly on the cement floor of the tunnels, something that made John wince. He was instinctively trying to creep along, his soldier’s instincts ordering that he be stealthy and careful in this unknown situation. He knew it didn’t matter, since Sherlock would surely know he was coming one way or the other, but he still tried to move quietly. It was damned near impossible, though. The tunnels were empty of everything besides John and the concrete walls. John shone the torch beam down the other corridors whenever he came to a crossroads or an intersection, but there was nothing there either.

He shuddered at the thought of coming down here without a map and trying to find his way back out again. It reminded him of the story of the labyrinth and the Minotaur, which was not the most comforting thought. Especially since John had felt eyes on him from the moment he’d stepped into the tunnels.

_Left, right, straight, left, left,_ John thought to himself, like a mantra. That would take him to the room where Mike’s interns dropped off the body parts. He double-checked the map anyway.

“I don’t know what’s past that,” Mike had said. “You’ll be on your own, except for him. He’ll know that you’re down there.”

There was a glow of light from up ahead, and John quickened his pace. That had to be the right way. Then John caught a whiff of the air, gagged, and _knew_ that this was the right way. Sure enough, the tunnel widened out as John went forward, leaving him in a room about twenty meters wide and long. In the wall opposite John, there was another long tunnel stretching forward into the darkness. It was strangely like walking the tracks on the London Underground and approaching a station, right down to the fluorescent lights in the ceiling.

Except subway stations usually weren’t full of dissected human organs. Refrigerators lined the walls of the room, their mechanical hum loud compared to the silence of the tunnels. _So there’s definitely electricity down here_ , John thought. Odds were, it was just the whims of the temple’s god that kept the tunnels from being lit up. Long rows of lab tables were set up, and there were body parts in various stages of decay on most of them.

There was a foot covered in maggots on the table next to John, and next to it was a pair of eyes in a petri dish, slowly liquefying. John shuddered, reminded of Afghanistan and the horror that came with being the first to respond to an attack. When an IED went off, all that was left over of the people near it was parts. An arm here, a pockmarked torso there, the dirt beneath them turning black from the coagulated blood. This mad scientist’s lab was just like that, except that the errant body parts were laid out with clinical efficiency. John even saw what looked like charts next to some of them.

Trying not to breathe through his mouth, John moved quickly through the room, stopping only to side-eye the severed head sitting on one of the tables. Compared to all of that, it was a relief to be back in the darkness of the tunnels with only his torch beam for company. He had a strong, instinctive urge to pull out his gun, but he knew that it’d be useless. He’d only really brought it along to comfort himself. Past the little room of horrors was unknown territory, and John supposed that was probably for the best. It would keep him from having any expectations.

John walked for another ten minutes, continuing to go straight every time he came to an intersection of tunnels mostly just so it would be easy to find his way back. If he came back. His leg was protesting every step of the way by the time the ground beneath his feet became wood instead of concrete.

He stared down, startled to be standing on hardwood floor. The walls around him were brick now, instead of concrete, and there was a faint light coming from up ahead that hadn’t been there a few seconds ago. John turned around, looking back down the tunnel he’d come from, and the entire thing was wood-floored and brick-walled too, despite the fact that it had definitely been concrete less than a minute ago.

John squared his shoulders and kept walking. He was dealing with a god, and apparently the games had begun.

He never quite found out what the source of the light he’d been following was. The minute he stepped into the room that it seemed to be coming from, his torch died suddenly, plunging him into darkness. John shook it futilely, clicking the switch to try to bring it back on, but it was no good. He had a moment of terrible panic, because he was alone and in the dark and was sickeningly far underground. It only got worse when he took a step back and discovered a solid wall behind him where the tunnel used to be. He was trapped

His body was shaking but his hands were steady, and John reached into his shoulder holster and pulled out his gun.

“Now what,” came a deep, baritone voice, seemingly right next to John’s ear, “are you going to do with that?”

And suddenly, there was light. John couldn’t find a source, but the room was lit from within by a cozy glow. John didn’t have much time to appreciate it, though, before he realized that the entire room had become mirrored.

The walls, the ceiling, even the floor, it was all covered in reflective glass. Every direction John turned, he saw a wide-eyed reflection of himself looking back. Every movement, every twitch, it was all reflected back at him, like being inside some kind of giant eye. It was extremely unnerving, and John couldn’t make himself step forward for fear that the glass floor would crack.

“You aren’t with the police,” came the same voice from before. John was still alone in the room, but the voice sounded as though its source was right next to him. “And you don’t have any body parts to spare, so what are you doing down here? Iraq or Afghanistan?”

“What?” John asked, the gun held loosely at his side. He’d found the god, apparently.

“Where did you serve? Iraq, or Afghanistan?” The voice, Sherlock, sounded smug and amused, like a cat with an interesting mouse. Mike’s words echoed through John’s memory, about Sherlock being dangerous and unpredictable. Hopefully, John had caught him at a good time.

“Afghanistan,” John said, forcing himself to stare straight ahead and not crane his head like an idiot, since his instincts were screaming to find the source of the voice. “How did you know?”

“Oh, a million little details,” Sherlock said. “Your tan lines, your stance, the way you hold your gun. You sneak around with military precision and you look for all the entrances and exits when you come into a room. There aren’t any in this room, by the way. And your pack has clearly seen use, so it didn’t come from an Army surplus store. If you’re here to ask me to fix your leg, I’m going to toss you back out. It’s psychosomatic, you wouldn’t have gotten this far if it weren’t.”

“No, it’s not about my leg.” He holstered his gun carefully. “I’ve come to ask for your help.”

“I don’t do favors. They’re tiresome. You’ll want to go to my brother for your boring grievances.” The voice had shifted to John’s other ear, like Sherlock was circling him.

“Your brother can’t help me,” John said. “They say that you know almost everything. That you can do things that are impossible even to other gods.”

“’They’ say a lot, and most of it is rubbish.” But Sherlock did sound at least a little interested now. “So, who do you want me to help?”

“My sister,” John said. When he blinked, he saw Harry lying in the hospital bed, face slack and empty. “Harriet Watson. She was hit by a car three weeks ago.”

“I can’t bring back the dead, little soldier. Some things are impossible.”

“She’s not dead!” John swallowed, and added in a calmer tone. “Her body’s being kept alive. They think she’ll heal without anything besides a few scars, but…she’s brain-dead. Physically, she’s all right, but in her mind, there’s no one there.” Eyes vacant, hands curled like dead leaves, only the steadily humming machines keeping her heart beating. “The hospital psychics say that her soul’s been separated from her body, and they can’t find it. They think she’s caught between this world and the next and can’t get back.”

“So disconnect her life support machine and arrange a nice funeral,” Sherlock said, tone a carefully cultivated boredom. “Once her body’s dead, her soul will be shoved into the next world and everyone can go on with their lives.”

“No!” John wanted to grab Sherlock, to shake him, to make him listen. Probably for the best that he couldn’t. “If her soul was brought back to her body she’d wake up. She’d live.” John cast beseeching eyes to the ceiling. “They say you can get anywhere, that nothing can hide from you. They say there’s no mystery you can’t solve. Please, you could find my sister. You could bring her back.”

There was a moment of silence, and Sherlock said, “Yes. I could. Why should I?”

And this was the moment John had been fearing. “Because I’m begging you.”

Sherlock laughed. “I told you. I don’t do favors, and saving your sister isn’t interesting. Do you have a plan for convincing me otherwise?”

John looked down, his reflection staring up at him looking desperate and devastated. “Please. I don’t have money to buy you offerings, I don’t even know what you’d want, but if you help her, then…”

It was all he had left, and it was far from any kind of trump card. “I’ll do anything you want. Anytime you want. I’ll pledge myself to you. I’d trade my life for hers. Just please.”

John hated begging, hated throwing himself on the mercy of others. But there was nothing else to do. If begging would appease Sherlock so he’d save Harry, then John would beg.

In between one blink and the next, a man was suddenly standing in front of John. John reeled back with an alarmed shout, his back thumping against the glass wall behind him as he stared. The man was dressed from head to toe in black. Black shoes, black trousers, black leather gloves, and a long black coat. His skin was pale white, and his hair was an unruly mess of black curls. He towered over John, and he didn’t reflect in the mirrors.

When he spoke, he spoke with Sherlock’s voice. “Anything?”

Shivering, John stared at the god, taking in the form he’d chosen. He didn’t look anything like his brother, though that wasn’t much of a surprise. John nodded and tilted his head up to look Sherlock in the eye. “Anything you want.”

“Would you stay down here?” Sherlock asked, a smile curling at his lips. “Would you spend the rest of your life down here, dependant on me? I’ve never had anyone down here for very long, little soldier. I’m interested to see what you’ll do.”

John closed his eyes. The most pathetic thing, he reflected, is that it wasn’t even that hard of a choice. He’d have given up everything for Harry anyway. But what was he really giving up on the surface? A civilian life that didn’t fit him anymore, a sense of boredom and loneliness so deep that it was crushing him.

Sherlock was dangerous, inscrutable, and might very well kill him some day. But it was still an easy choice to make. Maybe easier, because of that.

Looking up at Sherlock again, John said, “You’ll save Harry?”

“I will.”

“Then yes.” John held out his hand to shake on it, more out of instinct than anything else. “Deal?”

Sherlock’s teeth were very white and seemed unusually sharp when he smiled and shook John’s hand. “Deal.”


End file.
